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Comment by shams93 | Hacker News Reader

The key is more people forced to live with parents this doesn't just effect young people 78% of GenX are still forced to live at home. We have a society that is profoundly broken in so many ways.

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Gen X is people born between '65 and '80. You're saying that 78% of people, presumably in the US, who are currently between 41 and 56 are living with their parents?

52% of adults aged 18 to 29 live at home, the most since the great depression, according to this:

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-...

What does that have to do with GenX?

It's sourced data, to clear up confusion. The parent likely meant to say Gen Z.

They said:

>this doesn't just effect young people

So I had assumed they meant what they said. The oldest members of genZ are mid-20s, which I would not consider to be not-young people.

Maybe I'm just getting old.

While I agree that there are many parts of our society that are broken, I don’t think that living with parents (or grandparents) is part of that. If anything, I think the constant pressure to be fully independent by the time you’re in your early 20s is the indicator. In much of the world, it’s very common and even encouraged to live with previous generations, sometimes after marriage. There are a ton of benefits from this arrangement, including built-in care for younger and older folks, better ability to save, etc. I’ve seen more and more successful tech folks building multi-generation homes here in America to try to move towards this model for the future. I think the brokenness of the system is the degree to which we shame people that are diverging from the older American model.

> In much of the world, it’s very common and even encouraged to live with previous generations, sometimes after marriage. There are a ton of benefits from this arrangement, including built-in care for younger and older folks, better ability to save, etc.

My parents’ generation comes from a country where it’s common for married couples to live with the parents. All the cousins who are economically able to moved out to their own house. The only married couples living with their parents are the ones whose parents can’t afford to live alone, or who themselves can’t afford to live alone.

And unless more soundproof rooms become the norm, I can easily see why a young couple would not want to live in the same house as their parents. Most Americans houses are drywall, and nothing in between and sound really travels. As far as I can tell, having parents down the road, but in a separate house is the ideal.

I agree, but also "built-in care for younger and older folks" means that "women are expected to do that work". The "women do that work" is achievable without living together with parents.

But, even if you do live together, that work does not happen automatically by itself. Someone actually have to spend additional time doing that additional care work. Just living together wont magically provide care without someone spending additional effort.

You’re absolutely right, and if we can skip over the gender roles real quick, I think it’s another indication of a broader dysfunction that a family can’t support itself on a single income, requiring paid childcare of some form.

But yes, you’re right that the weight of that family care role would typically fall on the woman. I’m hoping that continues to change. I’ve seen real movement in that direction through quarantine as families have been forced to face financial realities.

Quarantine did made women with children loose their jobs a lot more then men. But it is not because they would want to loose income, it is because most childcare falls more on women even if both partners work from home. It is not voluntary single income or no income, it is struggling by.

You also cant ignore gender in the aspect of "who is the one with income and who is the dependent one seemingly spending money he earned while seemingly not working". The ressentments the stemed from that and unsolvable dysfunction made too many families life into suffering.

78% of GenX? Yeah, gonna need a citation on that one.

Actually, since GenX was probably the last generation where wide-scale home ownership was within reach I can see that fact being true if the home in question is the one they own.

> profoundly broken

Well, it's different than they way it was when I grew up, but I don't know if kids living with their parents necessarily indicates a "broken" society: humans more or less lived that way for millenia successfully until around the time of the industrial revolution.

And still do in most of the world outside of the lone-wolf United States.

This number is clearly wrong on its face. And in the case of GenXers, regardless of what percentage are living with their parents, I suspect the majority of those arrangements are that the parent is living with the child because the parent needs support, not the other way around.

Living with parents at least till marriage was the norm for large parts (majority) of population for large parts of history.

Do you have a source for that 78% number? GenX is old. A genXer "living at home" seems to me to be more likely "genXers are taking care of their elderly parents (boomers)".

GenX is old.

Gee, thanks.

/old

I'm not that far behind GenX. But it's definitely shocking to see someone claim that 78% of a generation that is over 40 years old is still "living at home"!

You can live with your parents and still have sex. It isn't weird or anything, unless you try it on the couch...

It's weird if you're a grown-ass man or woman. If you're unfortunate enough to be mooching off your parents in your 40s, you at least ought to have the decency to go somewhere else to do your business.

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